Attitude (psychology)

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This article is about the psychological term. For other uses, see Attitude.
Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's like
or dislike for an item. Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of
an "attitude object": i.e. a person, behaviour or event. People can also
be "ambivalent" towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously
possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question.
Attitudes are composed from various forms of judgments. Attitudes
develop on the ABC model (affect, behavioral change and cognition).
The affective response is a physiological response that expresses an
individual's preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal
indication of the intention of an individual. The cognitive response is a
cognitive evaluation of the entity to form an attitude. Most attitudes in
individuals are a result of observational learning from their
environment.

Contents
[hide]
• 1 Implicit and explicit attitudes
• 2 Philosophical aspect
• 3 Attitude formation
• 4 Factors that affect attitude change
• 4.1 Emotion and Attitude Change
• 4.1.1 Processing Models
• 4.1.2 Components of Emotion Appeals
• 5 Jung's definition of attitude
• 6 MBTI definition of attitude
• 7 References
• 8 See also
[edit] Implicit and explicit attitudes
There is also considerable research on "implicit" attitudes, which are
unconscious but have effects (identified through sophisticated methods
using people's response times to stimuli). Implicit and "explicit"
attitudes seem to affect people's behavior, though in different ways.
They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in
some cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly
understood.

[edit] Philosophical aspect

Atttitude may also be seen as a form or appearance that an individual
assumes to gain or achieve an egotistic preference, whether it is
acceptance, manifestation of power or other self-centered needs.
Attitude may be considered as a primitive attribute to the preservation
of the self or of the ego.

[edit] Attitude formation

Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of
experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may
affect attitudes - but believes that they may do so indirectly. For
example, if one inherits the disposition to become an extrovert, this may
affect one's attitude to certain styles of music. There are numerous
theories of attitude formation and attitude change. These include:
• Consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent in
our beliefs and values. The most famous example of such a theory
is Dissonance-reduction theory, associated with Leon Festinger,
although there are others, such as the balance theory of Fritz
Heider.
• Self-perception theory, associated with Daryl Bem
• Meta programs, associated with Neuro-linguistic programming
• Persuasion
• Elaboration Likelihood Model associated with Richard E. Petty
and the Heuristic Systematic Model of Shelly Chaiken.
• Social judgment theory
• Balance theory
 • Abundance theory
• Intellect

[edit] Factors that affect attitude change

Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. The celebrated work of
Carl Hovland, at Yale University in the 1950s and 1960s, helped to
advance knowledge of persuasion. In Hovland's view, we should
understand attitude change as a response to communication. He and his
colleagues did experimental research into the factors that can affect the
persuasiveness of a message:
Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the
person who receives and processes a message. One such trait is
intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are less easily
persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been
studied in this category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes
thought that those higher in self-esteem are less easily persuaded,
there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem
and persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate
self-esteem being more easily persuaded than both those of high
and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The mind
frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are
expertise, trustworthiness and interpersonal attraction or
attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been
found to be a key variable here (Hovland & Weiss, 1951); if one
reads a report about health and believes it came from a
professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded
than if one believes it is from a popular newspaper. Some
psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect
and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people
that a message came from a credible source disappeared after
several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there is a
sleeper effect is controversial. Received wisdom is that if people
are informed of the source of a message before hearing it, there is
less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are told a message
and then told its source.
Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in
 persuasion. Sometimes presenting both sides of a story is useful to
help change attitudes.

Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive

evaluation to help change an attitude. In the central route to persuasion
the individual is presented with the data and motivated to evaluate the
data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral
route to attitude change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the
content but at the source. This is commonly seen in modern
advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors
or experts are used. In other cases film stars are used for their
attractiveness.

[edit] Emotion and Attitude Change

Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and
attitude change. Much of attitude research emphasized the importance
of affective or emotion components (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992).
Emotion works hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we
think, about an issue or situation. Emotional appeals are commonly
found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent
examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign
advertising emphasizing the fear of terrorism.
Taking into consideration current attitude research, Breckler and
Wiggins (1992) define attitudes as “mental and neural representations,
organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence
on behavior” (p. 409). Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of
cognitive, affective and conative components. Attitudes are part of the
brain’s associative networks, the spider-like structures residing in long
term memory (Higgins, 1986) that consist of affective and cognitive
nodes linked through associative pathways (Anderson, 1983; Fazio,
1986). These nodes contain affective, cognitive, and behavioral
components (Eagly & Chaiken, 1995).
Anderson (1983) suggests that the inter-structural composition of an
associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node.
Thus, by activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may
be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be
intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to
produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and
attitude change (Eagly & Chaiken, 1995).
Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of
emotion, also impacts attitude change. Research suggests that predicting
emotions is an important component of decision making, in addition to
the cognitive processes (Loewenstein, 2007). How we feel about an
outcome may override purely cognitive rationales.
In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is
measuring emotion and subsequent impacts on attitude. Since we
cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have
been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures
may include the use of physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal
changes, and other body rate measures (Breckler & Wiggins, 1992). For
instance, fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate
and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994). Other methods include
concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues (Shavelson
& Stanton, 1975).

[edit] Processing Models

Some research on emotion and attitude change focuses on the way
people process messages. Many dual process models are used to explain
the affective (emotion) and cognitive processing and interpretations of
messages. These include the elaboration likelihood model, the heuristic-
systematic model, and the extended parallel process model.
In the Elaboration Likelihood Model, or ELM, (Petty and Cacioppo,
1986), cognitive processing is the central route and affective/emotion
processing is often associated with the peripheral route. The central
route pertains to an elaborate cognitive processing of information while
the peripheral route relies on cues or feelings. The ELM suggests that
true attitude change only happens through the central processing route
that incorporates both cognitive and affective components as opposed to
the more heuristics-based peripheral route. This suggests that
motivation through emotion alone will not result in an attitude change.
In the Heuristic-Systematic Model, or HSM, (Chaiken, Liberman, &
Eagly, 1989) information is either processed in a high-involvement and
high-effort systematic way, or information is processed through
shortcuts known as heuristics. Emotions, feelings and gut-feeling
reactions are often used as shortcuts.
The Extended Parallel Process Model, or EPPM, includes both thinking
and feeling in conjunction with threat and fear appeals (Witte, 1992).
EPPM suggests that persuasive fear appeals work best when people
have high involvement and high efficacy. In other words, fear appeals
are most effective when an individual cares about the issue or situation,
and that individual possesses and perceives that they possess the agency
to deal with that issue or situation.

[edit] Components of Emotion Appeals

Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may
include jealousy, disgust, indignation, fear, and anger. Fear is one of the
most studied emotional appeals in communication and social influence
research. Dillard (1994) suggests that “fear appeals have been thought
of as messages that attempt to achieve opinion change by establishing
the negative consequences of failing to agree with the advocated
position” (p. 295). The EPPM (above) looks at the effectiveness of using
fear and threat to change attitudes.
Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotion appeals
include the possibility of reactance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981) which may
lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of
attitude change. As the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion
level in motivating attitude change. If there is not enough motivation, an
attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the
motivation can be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change.
Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied
more than perceived positive emotions like humor. Though the inner-
workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may work by
creating incongruities in the mind (Maase, Fink & Kaplowitz, 1984).
Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the processing of
political messages (Nabi, Moyer-Guse, & Byrne, 2007). While evidence
is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for targeted attitude
change is receivers with low political message involvement.
Important factors that influence the impact of emotion appeals include
self efficacy, attitude accessibility, issue involvement, and
message/source features. Self efficacy is a perception of one’s own
human agency; in other words, it is the perception of our own ability to
deal with a situation (Bandura, 1992). It is an important variable in
emotion appeal messages because it dictates a person’s ability to deal
with both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not
self-efficacious about their ability to impact the global environment,
they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global
warming.
Dillard (1994) suggests that message features such as source non-verbal
communication, message content, and receiver differences can impact
the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of a message are
important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for
different people. Thus, in terms of emotion appeals messages, one size
does not fit all.
Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from
memory (Fazio, 1986); in other words, how readily available is an
attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement
(Zaichkowsky, 1985) is the relevance and salience of an issue or
situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with
both attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude
accessible attitudes are more resistant to change (Fazio & Williams,
1986).

[edit] Jung's definition of attitude

Attitude is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological
Types. Jung's definition of attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or
react in a certain way" (Jung, [1921] 1971:par. 687). Attitudes very
often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within
this broad definition Jung defines several attitudes.
The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the
following.
• Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two
attitudes is extremely frequent, one conscious and the other
unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of
contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality
particularly evident in neurosis" (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 687).
• Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to
Jung's theory of types that he labeled them the "attitude-types".
• Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an
attitude" (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 785).
 • The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and
feeling psychological functions, each with its attitude.
• The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and
intuition psychological functions, each with its attitude.
"There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and
intuitive attitude" (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 691).
• Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms".
In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude. “When I take an
abstract attitude...” (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 679). Abstraction is
contrasted with concretism. “CONCRETISM. By this I mean a
peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction”
(Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 696).

[edit] MBTI definition of attitude

The MBTI write-ups limit the use of "attitude" to the extraversion-
introversion (EI) and judging-perceiving (JP) indexes.
The JP index is sometimes referred to as an orientation to the
outer world and sometimes JP is classified as an "attitude." In
Jungian terminology the term attitude is restricted to EI. In MBTI
terminology attitude can include EI and also JP. (Myers, 1985:293
note 7).
The above MBTI Manual statement, is restricted to EI," is directly
contradicted by Jung's statement above that there is "a typical thinking,
feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" and by his other uses of the
term "attitude". Regardless of whether the MBTI simplification (or
oversimplification) of Jung can be attributed to Myers, Gifts Differing
refers only to the "EI preference", consistently avoiding the label
"attitude". Regarding the JP index, in Gifts Differing Myers does use
the terms "the perceptive attitude and the judging attitude" (Myers,
1980:8). The JP index corresponds to the irrational and rational
attitudes Jung describes, except that the MBTI focuses on the preferred
orientation in the outer world in order to identify the function
hierarchy. To be consistent with Jung, it can be noted that a rational
extraverted preference is accompanied by an irrational introverted
preference.
[edit] References
• [1] From USA Today "Power of a super attitude"
• "The A-Word" by Paul Niquette
• Jung, C.G. (1966). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected
Works, Volume 7, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ISBN 0-691-01782-4.
• Jung, C.G. [1921] (1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works,
Volume 6, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-
01813-8.
• Myers, I. B. & Myers, P. B. (1980), Gifts Differing", Palo Alto, CA:
Consulting Psychologists Press. ISBN 0-89106-011-1
• Myers, I. B. & McCaulley, M. H. (1985), Manual: a guide to the
development and use of the Myers-Briggs type indicator", Palo Alto,
CA: Consulting Psychologists Press. ISBN 0-89106-027-8